


A Reason to Hope

by Mistress_of_Squirrels



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 05:00:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5653315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mistress_of_Squirrels/pseuds/Mistress_of_Squirrels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the fo4 song prompt on tumblr. My song was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y97u-U0nvJM</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Reason to Hope

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if I like how this turned out, but this was a very difficult song for me to write for. Posting it here, because tumblr isn't letting it show up in the tags for some reason.

Before the bombs, hope had been a staple in Nora’s life; hope for the life she and Nate were trying so hard to create, hope for the man their son would grow into, hope for a better, peaceful future. Hope had the power to carry her through what was otherwise unendurable. It took her to heights she’d have never achieved on her own, made her believe, wholeheartedly, that anything was possible.

It wasn’t until after the war, with her dreams crumbled to dust, her husband murdered and her son stolen from his lifeless arms, that she realized that hope was a double-edged blade, and it cut more deeply than she ever could have imagined. All she’d managed to accomplish with her foolish dreams was to make her inevitable fall that much harder. For a time, she manages to convince herself that hope is something best left for those that don’t know any better. Killing that part of herself is a necessary sacrifice, but it hurts more than she thinks it ought to.

Nora finds it impossible to keep from comparing this new world to the one she left. Two hundred years have passed while she slept in cryostasis and it shows in the broken down shells of buildings, the skeletal remains of the trees, the rusting frames of cars. Two hundred years might have passed, but for her, it was only a fraction of that time. She can still see the white picket fences, the brilliant reds and golds of autumn, and the fresh coats of paint on her neighbors’ houses whenever she closes her eyes. It’s difficult to reconcile what was with what is, but she does her best because there’s no other choice.

The search for her son leads her all over the Commonwealth, and she aids others whenever she can. It helps to take her mind off of her own burdens, and she’d like to think that some small part of her former self still remains. The apocalypse has made her older and wiser, perhaps, but it hasn’t yet made her a cynic. The emotion shining on the faces of the settlers she helps confuses her at first, until she recognizes it for what it is: hope. Even more startling is the realization that she is the reason it’s there. She’s both moved and wracked with guilt. All she can think is that she’s setting these people up for future heartbreak, and most have already had more than their fair share. In this desolate wasteland, who could expect any less?

Despite her willingness to lend a helping hand, Nora doesn’t allow herself to get too close to anyone. She smiles for them, exchanges pleasantries and witticisms, and even cares for them in a broad sense, but she cannot bring herself to allow anything deeper or more meaningful. The wound of losing everyone she ever loved is still raw and bleeding in her heart. Life has never offered guarantees, but once it offered the illusion of safety; the bombs ripped through even that bit of comfort. Loss is the closest thing to a promise this broken world has, and Nora is not certain she can survive any beyond what she has already endured. So she keeps them all at a distance and ignores that it feels like she’s cutting away another piece of herself in doing so.

That sense of losing herself little by little is becoming overwhelming. When she is alone and not fighting for her life or trying to solve the latest problem the world has thrown at her, she wonders if there will be any of the old Nora left. There’s no place for softness here, and excising those parts of herself has become a necessity, one she attempts to liken to when she used to prune her roses for winter. Still, she can’t help but fret, in the darkest corners of her mind, that maybe she’s losing something vital. When…if she finds her son, will she still have what she needs to be a mother, or will that have been shorn in the name of survival, too?

The question plagues her, especially after Kellogg, the bastard that killed Nate, dies by her own brutal hand and she learns that the baby she’s been looking for is gone, replaced by a child of ten that knows nothing about the family he was ripped from. It’s both a relief and a bitter disappointment to realize that some softness yet remains in her. It’s a special kind of agony as she watches her son refer to some faceless man as ‘Father’, and the knowledge that she is watching this all play out in the memories of the one who murdered the man that rightfully deserved that title is an added twist of the knife. Perhaps it’s an act of cowardice, but Nora wants so badly to escape, to forget, momentarily, that this waking nightmare is in fact her reality. As luck would have it, she’s right in the middle of an entire town that seems to thrive on just that.

Goodneighbor was one of the last places she would have expected her search to take her, and her arrival was… interesting, to say the least. A failed extortion, a murder, and an introduction to Hancock, the town’s mayor, all rolled into one main event.

Despite her initial welcome, she quickly develops a fondness for the little town. The people here are raw, ruthless even, but they don’t put on airs like the folks in Diamond City. What you see is what you get, and after one too many revelations that leave her feeling like the world is slipping from beneath her feet, she can appreciate how _real_ it is.

There is no law in Goodneighbor, no clinging to the norms and customs of a long dead society. It shouldn’t work – everything about her Pre-War upbringing says so – but somehow it does. She’s no safer here than anywhere else, but she’s _free_ , in a way she never has been before. Here, she can catch her breath, set aside the burdens of her former life and just be without anyone thinking her lesser for her moment of respite.

The temptation to get lost in it all is strong, and probably the reason she stays longer than she planned to. It’s also her only excuse for getting caught up in Bobbi’s scheme, even if it is a poor one. There are lines Nora doesn’t cross, and stealing from Hancock, who, despite killing a man right in front of her has shown her nothing but kindness the few times they’ve spoken, is one of them. This leads to her standing in his office, stumbling over an awkward apology, and that makes sense, because she’s wronged him. The part she can’t quite wrap her head around is how this leads to her leaving Goodneighbor with it’s mayor at her side. She chalks it up to yet another strange twist in her new life and moves on, surprised at how much she enjoys his company.

Traveling with Hancock brings out an odd mix emotions that Nora isn’t sure how to deal with. Beneath the confidence, the chems, and the easy humor is a man that truly cares about the people around him, and will go to great lengths to see that they have what they need, even if that means getting his own hands dirty. Whatever this world had to offer in terms of comfort and power was his and yet he’s turned his back on it all to travel with her because he believes in what they can accomplish. The thought leaves her uncomfortable because it wakes a flicker of something in her that she thought long dead, something that feels suspiciously like hope, and she can’t afford that now.

Nora isn’t sure how to process this latest development, or the knowledge that all the parts she’d thought were gone were simply buried. Hancock brings them to the surface, one by one, in ways she can’t even begin to understand. He was born to this world, has never known anything different, and while it has shaped him, hardened him, perhaps even broken him, he has managed to find a reason to keep going.  
She wonders if that is the difference between those rare few like him and the others that get trampled beneath the weight of this life, and thinks that maybe the difference between their worlds, old and new, are more superficial than she thought. For the first time in what seems like an age, she feels just a bit lighter.

It is the moment she has been waiting for, and all she can do is swallow back a wave of nausea as horror settles like shards of ice in the pit of her stomach. She has found her son. Not a baby, not even the little boy she’d been expecting, but a grown man that is twice her age. It breaks her heart to think of how much she has missed. She wants to blame herself for not being fast enough, for not trying hard enough, but the bitter truth is that she never had a chance. Sixty years came and went as she sat frozen, and that shakes her more than the two centuries she already knew about.

Hancock listens as she attempts to purge her pain and disappointment, holds her close as she weeps for all that was taken from her before she ever knew it was lost. He can’t know what it’s like- she doubts anyone can- but he is there, and it means more than she could ever explain.

Just when she thinks her heart could not fracture any further, she discovers the full extent of what Shaun, her baby, has become. The Institute has terrorized the Commonwealth for decades, and the biggest atrocities have been carried out at his command. He calmly explains that the death of his father, her husband, was collateral damage and her release from the vault was orchestrated to sate his own curiosity. She doubts that he ever expected her to make it this far, and the thought floods her veins with rage. There is blood on her hands, and she won’t pretend there isn’t, but even at her coldest, she could never have displayed this utter lack of feeling. She sees the color of Nate’s eyes and the shape of her mouth and wants to scream her denial to the sky. This can’t be her son, not when she can remember with such vivd clarity his sweet smiles as he gazed up at her from his crib. He would deny others humanity because he has none, and it is in that moment she knows what she must do, even when she is certain that it will break what’s left of her.

The detonator feels heavy in fingers gone numb and her eyes burn with unshed tears. She takes several trembling breaths as she fights the urge to retch until a gentle hand comes to rest on her shoulder. She looks up into Hancock’s ruined features and sees the question in his ebony eyes. She knows that, should she ask, he’ll take this burden from her, but she can’t bring herself to do so. Shaun is still her son, stranger or no, and her convictions mean nothing if she shirks that responsibility now. Nora slams a shaking hand on the button and forces herself to watch the consequences of her action. She owes her son that much.

Choking sobs ring out in the night long after the roar of the explosion dies away. She hears something like the howl of a wounded animal and realizes, distantly, that it is her. Arms lock her within their embrace, and she can just make out the red of Hancock’s coat through her blurring vision. She doesn’t know how long they remain like that, but the fires over the CIT have been reduced to glowing embers by the time she’s cried herself out.

The front of his coat is a rumpled mess of tears and snot, and yet all Nora can see in his face is his concern for her. He wipes her remaining tears away with the rough pad of his thumb and tilts her chin up to press a kiss at the corner of her mouth. She sucks in a breath tucks her head beneath his chin. She doesn’t have the words to explain what she’s feeling, but she tightens her arms around his thin frame and hopes it’s enough to convey the depth of her emotion. Hancock has never judged her, never found her wanting. Part of her thinks he should, that she deserves nothing less, but that part is silenced beneath the swell of gratitude for his unwavering support.

Nothing is right, and Nora isn’t sure if it ever will be again. The last remnants of her life lie in ashes around her but hope flares to life, so bright she can feel it as a physical presence. The road ahead is anything but certain, obscured by the shadows of her past, but she feels more like the old Nora than she has since she left the vault. For him, she’ll keep fighting. For him, she can find a reason to keep going, no matter what the future holds.


End file.
